Eduard Tubin: Kratt

Paavo Järvi, Estonian Festival Orchestra and Florian Donderer

Released on 6/23/23 by Alpha Classics
Main artists: Paavo Järvi Estonian Festival Orchestra Florian Donderer
Genre: Classical

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When the various members of the Järvi conducting family turn to Estonian music, the results range from good to absolutely delightful, and there is an example of the latter on this 2023 release by Paavo Järvi. It is the titular work, which opens the program and was Estonia's first ballet when it was premiered in 1944 and had six performances before the theater presenting it was destroyed. It is a somewhat helter-skelter work with a peasant setting and some bracing folkish music that resulted from the influence of Zoltán Kodály; it was also recorded by Neeme Järvi, so one may take the work as a family favorite. There is another work by Tubin on the program, the Music for Strings, from slightly later and reflecting the overwhelming influence Bartók had in post-World War II Eastern Europe. The Tubin works are paired with more recent Polish works, and the notes stress the affinities between these two musical cultures that were temporarily smothered by Soviet cultural power. Grażyna Bacewicz's Concerto for string orchestra is an elegant neoclassic work, but the program ends on an extremely downbeat note with the Musique funèbre for string orchestra of Witold Lutosławski, a grim work that is no lofty oration in memory of Bartók (it was written on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his death) but a cry of pain that brings to mind the grim slow movements of Shostakovich's later years. Perhaps its inclusion at the end is meant to suggest that in this part of the world, the Reaper is never far away. Whatever the case, it receives a fine emotional performance from Järvi and the Estonian Festival Orchestra. This is an entirely distinctive collection of Eastern European pieces that most listeners from outside the region will not have heard, and it has a strongly personal flavor.
© James Manheim /TiVo

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Eduard Tubin: Kratt

Paavo Järvi

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Suite from the Ballet Kratt (Eduard Tubin)

I. Introduction - Peasant Dance - Dance of the Goblin